09.30.09
capitalism, growth, cancer
“Modern capitalism has created a world totally different from anything known before. Previous ages have assumed that resources are limited and that economics – housekeeping – is about how to distribute them fairly. Since Adam Smith, we have learned to assume that exponential growth is the basic law of economics and that no limits can be set to it. The result is that increased production has become an end in itself; products are designed to become rapidly obsolete so as to make room for more production; a minority is ceaselessly urged to multiply its wants in order to keep the process going while the majority lacks the basic necessities for existence; and the whole ecosystem upon which human life depends is threatened with destruction. Growth is for the sake of growth and is not determined by any overarching social purpose. And that, of course, is an exact account of the phenomenon which, when it occurs in the human body, is called cancer. In the long perspective of history, it would be difficult to deny that the exuberant capitalism of the past 250 years will be diagnosed in the future as a desperately dangerous case of cancer in the body of human society – if indeed this cancer has not been terminal and there are actually survivors around to make the diagnosis.”
R. Bellah and associates, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, 114.
Run this through the grid of large church, where success was often determined simply by butts and bricks, and you know why the body is sick.. Add the approach noted by social historian Ronald Wright, our tendency to try harder using the same methods as we see the cliff approaching, and the scenario for large churches is bleak.
…links for your linking pleasure 37… « Community of the Risen said,
September 30, 2009 at 12:21 pm
[...] On Capitalism, Growth, and Cancer “Modern capitalism has created a world totally different from anything known before. Previous ages have assumed that resources are limited and that economics – housekeeping – is about how to distribute them fairly. Since Adam Smith, we have learned to assume that exponential growth is the basic law of economics and that no limits can be set to it. The result is that increased production has become an end in itself; products are designed to become rapidly obsolete so as to make room for more production; a minority is ceaselessly urged to multiply its wants in order to keep the process going while the majority lacks the basic necessities for existence…” -R. Bellah and associates, Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life, 114. [...]
The Disparity Between Word and Deed | Community of the Risen said,
November 13, 2009 at 2:59 pm
[...] I would argue that the main issue at hand is the disparity between word and deed. It is something central to the Biblical narrative, and a central theme in Christianity today. How do we live out what we believe in our contexts? Our contexts are often in conflict with everything we believe. I have read numerous posts on capitalism (including this good post at NextReformation), and I feel inescapably linked to the system (especially with so much school debt, which, in a capitalist system, is used a kind of intellectual capital that will “pay off” more in the end). The conondrum, however, is that I would have never been exposed to my distaste for capitalism and other seemingly “anti-Christian” ideologies (or at least in their extremes anti-Christian) without going to school and accruing all that debt. [...]